My Life With IT

“Who’s the Skype expert?” Someone asked. I don’t think there can really be experts in every software that we use in the company. I hear “Who’s the Word expert?”, “Who’s the Excel expert?”, “Who’s the PowerPoint expert?, “Who’s the Lotus Notes expert?”, “Who’s the <insert software/hardware name> expert?” most of the time. Sometimes, I cringe at the question.

There are times problems stump the experts too. That’s why Experts Exchange came about. Experts exchange information and resolutions. As users, we’d always assume that since this company has produced this software, the consultants working inside, no matter how new, they would should be experts in the area. We’d go asking “Who’s the expert?”

On why this came about was a user asking a Skype question. There was a message saying that the message was not delivered and she wanted to know why. The logical answer was that the recipient was not logged on and thus, the message would not get through. I do know that MSN Windows Live does support sending messages to offline contacts. Now, can the Skype expert enlighten me on whether messages can still be sent to offline contacts?

The next question was that why the recipient was not logged on when the user was logged on. The logical answer is that the user had saved the login settings and upon startup, Skype would log in automatically. The recipient may have set it to manual. The user suggested that everyone should do the same, login automatically at every startup. Now, isn’t that a waste of precious resources and if I’m not in the mood to use Skype, why the heck should I do it automatically?

Oh by the way, I put in busy mode and I don’t add strangers. It’s unnerving to receive requests from total strangers on my Skype. 2 are rude, they just said “Hello, please add me to your contact list.” I don’t know you, so I won’t add you. And the shortest of them all that I used to see before I migrated from mIRC is “Hi, care to chat” No punctuation at the end, mind you. So is that a question or demand?